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Learning SQL: A Step-By-Step Guide Using Oracle

Learning SQL: A Step-By-Step Guide Using Oracle is a brief, hands-on tutorial covering the basics of using SQL, as well as using the Oracle database engine with SQL. It assumes no previous knowledge of programming or databases. The book focuses on providing an introduction to beginning SQL tasks. Throughout the chapters, readers are taken through various beginning aspects of SQL. At the end of each chapter, a series of exercises is provided to facilitate the practice of these newly learned skills. Throughout the book, common pitfalls and style tips are called out in margin boxes. With this book, readers learn not only the basics, but also gain insight into how these skills are used by professional Oracle programmers. This book is appropriate as a main textbook in an Introduction to Oracle/SQL course, or as a supplemental book for an Introduction to Database course for CS, CIS, MIS, or IT students.

Paperback: 368 pages

Publisher: Addison Wesley; 1St Edition edition (May 25, 2002)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0201773635

ISBN-13: 978-0201773637

Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 0.5 x 8.9 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds

Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

Despite the pile Oracle Certified Professional training material I received in class and the OCP certification books on SQL, there were aspects that I didn't fully understand until I read this excellent book.Part I contains the absolute basics, all of which are as applicable to IT professionals and business users. The first three chapters are standard fare in most books of this sort - getting started and the basic commands (SELECT, CREATE, etc.). It's in Chapters 3-9 where the clarity of the author's writing pays off. These chapters cover Cartesian products, joins and aliases; set operations; grouping and sub queries. These are not easy to grasp by beginners, but the book clearly explains each, and also goes into details such as the differences between a join and sub queries, sub query correlation and similar topics.Part II of the book covers more advanced tasks that are more suited to DBAs., with some material that will interest advanced business users and IT business systems analysts. For the DBA only are chapters on creating tables and using Oracle's SQL*Loader, triggers and PL/SQL (although some advanced business users employ PL/SQL it's rare, and the focus in the chapter on the subject is more in line with DBA uses). For all readers the chapter titled "Multiple Commands, START Files, and Reports" contains highly useful information, especially on how to do crude branching with the DECODE statement. The four appendices are also valuable references, and cover using Oracle in the UNIX environment, data dictionaries, the student database and associated tables, and improvements that Oracle made to 8i and 9i.